If you’re not watching Glenn Beck’s TV show on Fox News you need to start. Beck continues to do the work much of the big media refuses to when it comes to outlining the relationships and policy aims of the Obama Administration.
Another fantastic weekly contribution from Beck is his “Founders Fridays,” where he dedicates the hour to covering information that you need to know about members of our country’s founding generation. So far he has done shows on Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, George Whitefield, George Washington, Sam Adams and others.
Inspired by Beck, this column would like to start featuring some key quotes from our founders – on Fridays. The Founders – and in fact the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are becoming popular once again. And thank God for that. As Glenn Beck states so well – not enough Americans understand the foundation of the country.
For this first edition let’s take a look at what some of our Founding Fathers might have said to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who recently said that we should have a moratorium on talking about the morality issues. The Illinois Family Institute’s Dave Smith and Laurie Higgins recently wrote about Daniel’s statement – you can read their articles here and here.
As Fox News likes to say, we report, you decide. Are you with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels or the Founding Fathers?
“[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained…” ~ President George Washington’s First Inaugural Address
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” ~ George Washington’s Farewell Address
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” ~ John Adams
“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.” ~ Samuel Adams
“Reading, reflection, and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts … in which all religions agree.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“Religion is the only solid Base of morals and Morals are the only possible support of free governments” ~ Gouverneur Morris
“God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” ~ Samuel Adams
“No compact among men … can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.” ~ George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789
“Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.” ~ John Witherspoon
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” ~ Fisher Ames
“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” ~ Benjamin Rush
